The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905-1907

6. Is Land Nationalisation a Sufficiently Flexible Method?

ComradeJohn said at Stockholm (p. 111 of the Minutes) that
the “draft providing for land municipalisation is more acceptable,
because it is more flexible: it takes into account the diversity of
economic conditions, and it can be carried out in the process of the
revolution itself”. I have already pointed out the cardinal defect of
municipalisation in this respect: it rivets allotment ownership to the
property form. Nationalisation is incomparably more flexible in this
respect, because it makes it much easier to organise new farms on the
“unfenced” land. Here it is also necessary to refer briefly to
other, minor arguments that John raised.

“Thedivision of the land,” says John, “would in some
places revive the old agrarian relations. In some regions the distribution
would be as much as 200 dessiatins per household, so that in the Urals, for
instance, we would create a class of new landlords.” That is a sample
of an argument which denounces its own system I And it was that kind of
argument that decided the issue at the Menshevik Congress! It is
municipalisation, and it alone, that is guilty of the sin referred to here,
for it alone rivets the land to individual regions. It is not the division
of land that is to blame, as John thinks, thus falling into a ridiculous
logical error, but the provincialism of the municipalisers. In any case,
according to the Menshevik programme, the municipalisedlands in the Urals would remain the “property” of the people of
the Urals. That would mean the creation of anew, reactionary,
Cossack stratum—reactionary because privileged small farmers having
ten times more land than all the rest of the farmers could not but resist
the peasant revolution, and could not but defend the privileges of private
landownership. It only remains for us to assume that on the basis of that
same programme, the “democratic state” might declare the tens
of millions of dessiatins of Ural forests to be “forests of national
importance”, or “colonisation lands” (does not the Cadet
Kaufman apply that term to the forest land in the Urals, within the 25 per
cent limit, which means 21,000,000 dessiatins in the Vyatka, Ufa, and Perm
gubernias?). and on that ground become their “owner”. Not
flexibility, but confusion, pure and simple, is the distinguishing feature
of municipalisation.

Nowlet us see what carrying out municipalisation in the very process of the
revolution means. Here we meet with attacks on my “revolutionary peasant
committees” as a class institution. “We are for non-class
institutions,” the Mensheviks argued at Stockholm, playing at
liberalism. Cheap liberalism! It did not occur to our Mensheviks that in order
to introduce local self-government of a non-class character it is necessary to
defeat the privileged class against which the struggle is being waged and to
wrest the power from it. It is just “in the very process of the
revolution”, as John puts it, i. e., in the course of the struggle to
drive out the landlords, in the course of those “revolutionary act
ions of the peasantry” that are mentioned also in the Mensheviks’
resolution on tactics, that peasant committees can be set up. The introduction
of local self-government of a non-class character is provided for in our
political programme; it is bound to be established as the organisation ofadministrationafter the victory, when the whole of the population will
have been compelled to accept the new order. If the words of our programme about
“sup porting the revolutionary actions of the peasantry, including the
confiscation of the landlords’ lands” is not mere phrase-mongering, then
we must think about organising the massesfor those“actions”!
Yet that is entirely overlooked in the Menshevik programme. That programme is
sodrawn up as to be easily and wholly converted into a parliamentary Bill,
like the Bills proposed by the bourgeois parties, which either (like the
Cadets) hate all “actions”, or opportunistically shirk the task
of systematically assisting and organising such actions (like the Popular
Socialist). But a programme built on such lines is unworthy of a workers’
party which speaks of a peasant agrarian revolution, a party which pursues
the aim not of reassuring the big bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy (like the
Cadets), not of reassuring the petty bourgeoisie (like the Popular
Socialists), but exclusively of developing the consciousness and initiative
of the broad masses in the course of their struggle against feudal Russia.

Recall,if only in general outline, the innumerable
“revolutionary actions” of the peasantry which took place in
Russia in the spring of 1905, in the autumn of 1905, and in the spring of
1906. Do we pledge our support to such actions or riot? If not, then our
programme would not be telling the truth. If we do, then obviously our
programmefails to givedirectives about the organisation ofsuchactions. Such actions can be organised only on the spot where
the struggle is going on; the organisation can be created only by the
masses who are directly taking part in the struggle, i. e., the
organisation must definitely be of the peasant committee type. To wait for
big,. regional self-governing bodies to be set up during such actions would
be ridiculous. The extension of the power and influence of the victorious
local committees to adjacent villages, uyezds, gubernias, towns, areas,and to the entire countryis, of course, desirable and
essential. There can be no objection to the need for such an extension
being indicated in the programme, but that should certainly not be confined
to regions, it should embrace the central government as well. That in the
first place. Secondly, in that case we must not speak aboutlocal
self-governing bodies, since that term points to thedependenceof the local governing organisations upon thestructureof the state. “Local self-government”
operates according to the rules laid down by the central authority,. and
within the limits set by the latter. The organisations of the fighting
people of which we are speaking must be quite independent of all the
institutions of the old regime, theymust fight for a new state structure, they must serve as the instrument of
the full power of the people (or the sovereignty of the people), and as the
means for securing it.

Inshort, from the standpoint of the “very process of the
revolution”, the Menshevik programme is unsatisfactory in all
respects. It reflects the confusion of Menshevik ideas on the question of
the provisional government, etc.